Theorising the Archival Absence and Everyday Lives of Female Editors in India

On 13 January 2026, Dr. Priyam Sinha (Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Humboldt University) presented a talk titled "Theorising the Archival Absence and Everyday Lives of Female Editors in India."

Event Details

Date and Time: 13 Jan 2026, Tuesday, 4.00pm to 6.00pm
Venue: NUS FASS Research Division Seminar Room, AS7 06-42

About the Talk

Why is film editing in India widely seen as “women’s work,” and what does this mean for women’s creative authority and visibility in cinema? This lecture explores how gender biases and deeply embedded expectations shape labor practices in Indian film industries, especially within editing departments that are often dominated by women yet remain institutionally undervalued and historically invisible.

Based on interviews with twenty women editors and archival research conducted between 2024 and 2025, the lecture examines why women enter editing, the kinds of challenges they face on and off the set, and why their contributions remain undocumented in film histories and industry records. While conversations around sexism and inequality in Indian media industries have grown in recent years, this talk explicitly attends to the everyday structures that quietly shape who gets recognized as a creative author, who remains behind the scenes and what kinds of labor hierarchies exist.

Overall, the lecture unfolds in three parts: first, theorizing archival absences in production cultures; second, examining institutional barriers to women’s entry through skill-based training and film schools; and finally, analyzing how gendered hierarchies within studio systems deny women authorial control while reinforcing their perceived immateriality. Together, these dynamics reveal how gender discrimination and labor hierarchization actively shape women’s concentration in editing and their continued marginalization within industry histories.

About the Speaker

Dr Priyam Sinha is an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellow, at the Institute for Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University in Berlin. She received her PhD from the National University of Singapore and was recently awarded the Best Thesis by the Singapore Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Her research interests lie at the intersection of critical media industry studies, disability studies, gender studies, affect studies, production culture studies, and anthropology of the body. Her articles have been published in the European Journal of Cultural Studies; Media, Culture and Society; Communication, Culture and Critique; South Asian Diaspora, among others. She is also a regular podcast host at NewBooksNetwork and has been published in public writing forums like the Economic and Political Weekly, FemAsia, Asian Film Archive, among others.